A Cross-Sectional Study on Prevalence of SARS-COV-2 among Sanitation Workers in a Teaching Hospital in South India

On 11 March 2020, WHO declared Covid 19 as a pandemic? RTPCR, the gold standard test for diagnosis of COVID 19 has false negatives due to low viral load and inappropriate sample collection. Therefore, antibody tests are the alternative. This study is conducted to identify sociodemographic patterns and to measure seroprevalence of IgM antibodies against SARS-COV-2 among sanitation workers. A cross -sectional study was conducted during August 2020 -September 2020 among sanitation workers employed in Government General Hospital, Kurnool. After obtaining IEC clearance, informed consent was obtained from 151 participants and study was conducted using a pre-tested, semistructured questionnaire and Chemiluminescence Immunoassay (CLIA) test with cut off value for IgM antibodies of 10 AU/ml. The data was analysed using MS Excel 2016. Out of 151 participants, 59.6% were males. Majority (46.4%) were 31 to 40 yrs of age and 25.8% were illiterates. Hypertension was the most common comorbidity (12.6%) in the study population. Overall seroprevalence was found to be 6.6%, among females 8.2%, among study subjects aged more than 60 yrs it was found to be 33.3% and in those with Hypertension 15.8%. Out of those who turned out to be positive for antibodies, 100% were asymptomatic. After six months of emergence of first case, seroprevalence is only 6.62% indicating majority are still susceptible to Covid 19 infection. Among those positive for antibodies, 100% were asymptomatic, hence a need for periodic serological surveys among sanitation workers.